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This paper proposes an extension of Inference Anchoring Theory (IAT) that incorporates speaker-centered pragmatic phenomena: arguer identity, phatic speech acts, and emotive speech acts into the analysis of natural-language argumentation. While recent work has shown how ethos can be operationalized within IAT, the theory has not yet accounted for how pathos and phatic functions shape the dialogical conditions under which argumentative acts become felicitous. We argue that the felicity of phatic-maintaining, emotion-appealing, and emotion-expressing acts depends on the speaker’s perceived authorization, and that this authorization is conditioned by the identity projected through personality-based dispositions. We formalize these acts as additional illocutionary types within IAT and model how their acceptance or rejection influences the authorization of a subsequent act of arguing. A qualitative case study of the highest- and lowest-rated speakers in a competitive debate illustrates how differences in personality correspond to distinct patterns of phatic and emotive behavior, resulting in different evaluations of Perceived Argument Strength. The proposed extension provides a framework for analyzing how identity-sensitive authorization dynamics operate in dialogue and offers a foundation for future corpus-based and experimental research on the role of the arguer in argumentation.

Building on Nancy Fraser’s (1990) theorization of transnational public spheres, this study examines protest rhetoric of Ghanaian environmental activists who use social media platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, Twitter to protest illegal mining (galamsey). I argue that these activists, locally in Ghana and across the diaspora, construct what I call a Transnational Environmental Counterpublic (TEC) to mobilize, raise awareness and influence policy decisions in Ghana. Drawing on multimodal discourse analysis, I examine protest rhetoric across hashtags, viral posts alphabetic and visuals, and non-human materialities (colors, paper, cloth) to understand how networks of activists contest environmental injustices. This analysis shows that protest rhetoric is not only shaped by embodied and material actants, but they also contest the dominant narrative of land exploitation, extractive capitalism, and ecological responsibility in Ghana. I call on the field to recognize the value of transnational rhetorical practices and their role in shaping global conversations on environmental justice, digital activism, and transnational coalition building.

This essay examines three iconic photographs of “The 15 White Coats” who are a group of fifteen African American medical school students and emerging physicians who posed in solidarity in front of a former slave cabin in Louisiana. Although the photographs generated wide acclaim regarding underrepresentation in medicine, I argue that the performative goal of The 15 White Coats was to subvert any standard images of physicians as white and to underscore past and ongoing exploitation of Black bodies in medicine. More specifically, I demonstrate through these images a methodology of “visual counterstory,” which serves as a form of resistance to anti-Black sentiment while reinforcing positive images of Black physicians. Ultimately, I show how “visual counterstory” makes an important intervention in the Rhetoric of Health and Medicine scholarship, thereby, raising consciousness of the disparities occurring in the contemporary discourse of health and medicine.

Abstract In argumentation theory, loci - also referred to as topoi - are commonly viewed as abstract sources of inference that guide the invention of arguments. Within the Argument Model of Topics (AMT), loci are analysed as sources of inference underlying individual arguments. This paper extends said view by arguing that loci perform a discourse-directive function beyond the level of individual arguments. This function is understood in an analytical sense and refers to how loci orient argumentative interaction by indicating the inferential relations along which issues become arguable in particular ways, such as procedural conditions, goals, constrained choices, conceptual boundaries, or source evaluation. Situated at the meso-level of analysis, this function exceeds the micro-level reconstruction of individual arguments while preceding the identification of recurring argumentative patterns at the macro-level. This paper shows how the reappearance of premises in extended debates, when repeatedly connected to conclusions through the same loci , recurrently instantiates the same inferential relations that orient argumentative interaction. These recurrent inferential relations do not themselves constitute argumentative patterns, but repetition makes these relations empirically traceable across argumentative contributions before the stabilization of argumentative patterns. The analytical framework is illustrated by examples from the controversy of nuclear energy production.

This reflective essay examines my implementation of artifact-based collaborative learning in cybersecurity ethics education through the analysis of authentic but fictional case studies. Rather than analyzing pre-digested narratives, such as the case of Edward Snowden, students engage with hypothetical primary source materials (internal memos, encrypted communications, investigative reports, and exit interviews) that mirror reality and professional investigative practice. The assignment requires collaborative groups to produce a written analysis addressing six analytical tasks that integrate ethical frameworks, legal analysis, and stakeholder perspectives. Students learn to craft arguments that synthesize documentary evidence, construct legal analyses using appropriate discourse, and develop policy recommendations in professional genres. Students navigate the grey areas of cybersecurity ethics, law, and policy, wrestling with competing approaches where reasonable people disagree. The artifact-based collaborative writing approach demonstrates how technical students can develop integrated writing and reasoning capabilities essential for cybersecurity governance roles when these skills are embedded in meaningful professional contexts.

This qualitative, triple case study reveals how policy reports function as enduring rhetorical resources beyond publication. Textual-intertextual analysis of three antimicrobial resistance reports—including 23 interviews and more than 700 related texts—illuminates how the reports enable subsequent persuasion by filling information gaps, supplying authoritative citations, and representing landmarks. Leveraging theories of circulation, recomposition, and extended delivery, the article offers heuristics to help writers design reports that better equip others to argue in policy contexts over time.

Studies on the writing process through the analysis of pauses, highlight a link between content formulation and linguistic units. From a text linguistics perspective, particularly Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), this relationship becomes even more apparent. This study investigates the location and duration of pauses in relation to syntagmatic units and their functional roles using an SFL-based framework, answering: (1) In what syntagmatic and functional contexts do pauses occur during the process of writing? (2) How does the length of pauses vary in different syntagmatic and functional contexts during the process of writing? (3) How do the frequency and length of pauses during writing vary because of interactions between their syntagmatic and functional contexts? Using keystroke logging, the writing process of 20 adult native English speakers composing argumentative essays was recorded. Findings suggest key syntagmatic and functional units prompt pauses, signaling decision-making moments and cognitive effort in generating a coherent text.

In primary education, children frequently combine drawings with alphabetic writing in their compositions, and research has shown that drawing can support early writing development. Building on existing research on multimodality and intermodality in early writing, this study examines how drawing and writing function together in children’s multimodal compositions produced for diverse social purposes. The study analyses multimodal texts written by Swedish learners aged 7–8 years and explores intermodal relations between writing and drawing using a systemic functional, transitivity-based analytical approach. The findings indicate a predominance of word-led and combinatory intermodality, with alphabetic writing generally assuming a dominant role. At the same time, children strategically integrate drawing and writing in ways that vary according to social purpose, task theme, and the specific affordances of each mode. In several cases, drawing enables the expression of meanings that are less readily conveyed through writing alone, underscoring its distinct representational potential. The study contributes to ongoing work on intermodality in early school writing by demonstrating the analytical affordances of transitivity for examining multimodal meaning-making, and it highlights the need for pedagogical practices and teacher metalanguage that support flexible movement across semiotic modes in early literacy education.

Social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter/X are widely blamed for the spread of mis- and disinformation, surveillance capitalism, thought manipulation, and the decay of critical discourse, leading critics to argue vociferously for regulation. This essay argues that Hannah Arendt’s conception of “the social” realm reframes the problem of social media not as a contest between free speech and regulation but as a problem of conformism, the dominant mode of discourse in the social. We look to the field of persuasive technology in computer science as illustrative, showing how conformism was merely reverse engineered from society into the platforms themselves. If, as Arendt describes, the social is “a world where speech has lost its power,” then social media is where it has lost its power precisely because the technology engineers speech so exquisitely, makes it so effortlessly consumable, that we fail to perceive we have stopped speaking altogether.

This essay examines Indian prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru’s 1949 visit to the United States as an embodied display of postcolonial sovereignty at a key moment of Cold War geopolitics. We argue that Nehru leveraged Truman’s invitation to articulate his own view of India’s role on the Cold War world stage. Rather than adopting the standard bipolar framing of Cold War rhetorical discourse, we make the deliberate choice to read Nehru’s tour as he saw it: a strategic opportunity to secure US economic assistance, affirm India’s independence from British or American ideological influence, and express solidarity with oppressed peoples around the globe. Drawing on governmental and historical archives in New Delhi and Washington and press accounts from India, the United States, and beyond, we show how Nehru’s rhetorical movement through the United States disrupted Cold War scripts and foregrounded an alternative moral politics rooted in decoloniality, racial justice, and global cooperation.

Second language (L2) writers’ capacity to reason about language choices during revision is theoretically central to advanced writing development, yet few studies trace how this linguistic reasoning emerges in repeated feedback-revision cycles that integrate teacher and AI suggestions. This multi-case, longitudinal mixed-methods study examined how ten L2 learners enacted metalinguistic strategies and developed linguistic reasoning across a 12-week online Academic English program. Triangulated data sources included 1246 feedback revision episodes, pre-post reasoning-task responses, and semi-structured exit interviews. We operationalized linguistic reasoning as the processual construct of interest and treated metalinguistic strategies as observable indicators; reasoning responses were scored with a three-dimensional analytic rubric while revisions and interaction logs were coded thematically and by strategy. Results show a systematic shift from early, correctness-focused edits toward later revisions characterized by coordinated structural comparison, more explicit self-explanation, and integrative argumentation; composite reasoning scores increased, with the largest gains observed on depth of explanation. Process analyses identified recurrent patterns in which alternative-rich feedback coincided with comparison moves, partially divergent suggestions often coincided with more explicit self-explanation, and integrative argumentation involving discourse-level revision became more visible over time. Pedagogical implications are also discussed.

This article investigates how the public circulation of hype functions rhetorically in the context of emerging immersive technologies. Through an analysis of YouTube reviews of Apple’s Vision Pro headset, we examine how rhetorical strategies operate at the intersection of wearable and embodied technology discourse, affect theory, and public circulation. The analysis focuses on four dominant rhetorical strategies that function to intensify anticipation while simultaneously constraining critical evaluation: excitement, exploration, exemplification, and exaggeration. These findings are supplemented with extended-use experiences from multiple sources, illustrating the tension between anticipatory rhetoric and lived experience. By theorizing the embodied and affective dimensions of VR discourse, this article contributes to our understanding of how rhetorical practices in digital environments reshape critical evaluation about technologies.

Abstract While Presidential debates present policy positions, they also construct group identities. This article asks how argumentative structures and linguistic choices work together to produce the “We” identity and “Them” identity that is characteristic of polarised political discourse. We analyse the 2024 Trump–Harris debate by integrating only argumentation schemes into the Discourse-Historical Approach (DHA) for its approach to argumentation. Three questions guide our analysis: how argumentation schemes construct in-group and out-group identities; how do lexical choices, analysed through DHA’s nomination strategy, construct in-group/out-group identities; and whether patterned relationships exist between scheme types and discursive strategies. Drawing on 24 reconstructed arguments and six in-depth analyses, we observe that ad hominem attacks and poisoning-the-well arguments tend to co-occur with predication and perspectivisation strategies, while arguments from consequences tend to co-occur with justification. We term these patterned relationships schematic affinities and offer the concept as a hypothesis warranting systematic investigation rather than a confirmed finding. Lexical devices, including terms that categorise actors as criminals, victims, or workers, reinforce the opposition that arguments establish. The framework demonstrates how argumentation theory and Critical Discourse Studies can inform one another, and it opens pathways for research on national identity formation, racism, and discriminatory discourse.

<bold xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"><i>Background:</i></b> While corporate social responsibility (CSR) reporting has been widely studied, fewer works have systematically examined how legitimation strategies are discursively constructed across generic structure in energy-sector disclosures. <bold xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"><i>Literature review:</i></b> Prior research has explored microlinguistic features and move structures, but little attention has been paid to how rhetorical strategies of legitimation are embedded across generic stages. <bold xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"><i>Research questions:</i></b> 1. How are the five major legitimation strategies linguistically realized across the move-step structures of Chinese and American energy CSR reports? 2. How do legitimation strategies co-occur with different discourse types of Chinese and American energy CSR reports? 3. How do the external factors influence the selection of legitimation strategies in CSR reporting practices? <bold xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"><i>Methodology:</i></b> This study analyzes 40 CSR reports (2020-2023) from Chinese and American energy companies using a corpus-assisted and move-step-based approach that integrates critical genre analysis and an integrated analytical legitimation framework. Lexical bundles and grammatical features are annotated across generic stages and discourse types to identify legitimation strategies and trace how they vary by national context and external pressures. <bold xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"><i>Results and conclusions:</i></b> This study identifies eight moves and 13 steps—including a newly observed move, M8: Elaboration of performance in the public health crisis—as well as four discourse types. Chinese reports emphasize authorization and moral narrative, while American reports favor rationalization, analogies of moralization and cosmos narrative. These strategies are embedded across moves and discourse types, adapting to institutional logics and external pressures.

Despite audience awareness being fundamental to writing pedagogy, student writers often struggle to move beyond considering their instructor as the primary reader, making connections between audience analysis and actual writing practice difficult. Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) when viewed as models of culture that can be prompted to adopt various audience personas, may enable writers to interact with simulated audiences across multiple theories of audience consideration. We thus critically review a taxonomy of five audience theories: (1) writing without audiences, (2) specific people as audiences, (3) discourse communities, (4) publics, and (5) networks/algorithms. Rather than using GenAI as a text production tool, we argue for using these technologies as objects of critical inquiry that allow students to “craft and design” audiences through iterative interaction. This approach encourages writers to critique the biased design of the technology itself as well as their own biases embedded in audience descriptions.

Abstract I propose a distinction between evidentiary and argumentative modes of the straw man fallacy. Traditional studies of this fallacy have focused on the changes that occur when a discussant represents another’s speech acts. This places undue normative significance on the question of “How much change is too much change?”, a question that has constantly eluded theorizing. I argue that in a dualist framework, when the evidentiary mode of the fallacy is taken as a starting point, the evaluation can begin with the phenomenon of deceit (as a marker of fallaciousness) and construct critical responses without the need to demonstrate that the change induced was in some sense disproportionate. To make this point, I give both imaginary and real-life examples of such evaluations.

This study examines how diversity and inclusion are communicated in LinkedIn job advertisements as workplace communication texts. Using qualitative, discourse-oriented analysis of job advertisements from global hotel brands, the study identifies recurring discursive frames through which organisations construct inclusivity, including belonging-oriented language, celebration of diversity, formal equal opportunity claims, and well-being–focussed narratives. These discourses are realised through specific communicative signals such as non-discrimination statements, values-based cultural cues, identity-affirming language, and references to inclusive policies. The study proposes the Inclusive Recruitment Communication Process conceptual framework, explaining inclusive recruitment communication as a platform-mediated process linking discourse, signalling, and conceptualised applicant sensemaking.

ABSTRACT In The New Rhetoric, Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca challenged the Cartesian understanding of the reasonable within philosophy with an expanded understanding based on types of agreements linked to types of audiences. They brought this same perspective to an analysis of values and value judgments in an attempt to respond to the logical empiricists’ critique. While scholars have examined the first of these goals, they have not attended to their analysis of values. This article addresses that neglect. It proposes that the way to understand Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca’s reevaluation of value judgment is to place The New Rhetoric in the context of the nineteenth-century discourse on values within philosophy. While rejecting the a priori ontology that characterizes most axiology, Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca nonetheless employ the concepts and technical vocabulary of the philosophers’ paradigm to transform the axiologists’ logic of values into their rhetoric of the preferable.

This article illustrates the affordances of a four-part interview protocol that combines elements of phenomenology with traditional discourse-based interviews. On the basis of two case studies with Black and Latinx writers, I demonstrate how this protocol affords a richer understanding of tacit writing competencies developed to push back against and mitigate the harm of marginalization.

Abstract Twentieth century innovations in reasoning about health and medicine (randomized clinical trials, systematic reviews, and a growing list of other inventions) have dramatically changed what counts as good argumentation within this domain. Though these new forms are often highly specialized and highly technical, they are gradually becoming “norms of public argumentation” (Zenker, et al., 2024), spreading from esoteric discussion among medical scientists into other discourses (including interpersonal exchanges between doctors and patients). This pattern is not limited to health and medicine but affects so many domains that it has become ubiquitous in contemporary argumentative discourse. But innovations aimed at improving reasonableness, when successful, can disrupt preexisting normative frameworks. They can undermine and supplant prior bases for inference, abruptly change standards for argument criticism, and require adoption of different rules for argumentative engagement. The study reported here concerns the volatility that surrounds these innovations in a case study of debate over a controversial treatment for a controversial disease. Close examination of the debate from a normative pragmatic perspective shows much greater normative complexity than has been acknowledged within contemporary argumentation theory, including unexpected volatility in norms that arguers themselves must somehow manage.

This study addresses the persistent misalignment between Arabic language curricula in Chinese universities and the communicative demands of Arabic-mediated business work. Adopting an explanatory sequential mixed-methods design, we surveyed 105 Chinese graduates who use Arabic in professional settings and conducted follow-up interviews with three lecturers responsible for Arabic for Business Purposes (ABP) courses. Exploratory factor analysis confirmed three reliable constructs: teaching methodology, workplace ability, and future training needs, while regression analyses showed that learner-centered, task-based teaching methodologies significantly predict graduates’ perceived workplace ability and heighten their awareness of ongoing training needs. The qualitative findings illuminated high-stakes communicative events such as negotiations, client correspondence, and intercultural meetings, and revealed systematic gaps between academic instruction and workplace discourse practices. Integrating quantitative and qualitative strands, the study proposes a dual-layer instructional model consisting of eight developmental stages and five interrelated competence domains that link classroom tasks to authentic business communication events. The model offers a contextualized pathway for redesigning ABP curricula in China and contributes to wider debates on how language-for-specific-purposes programmes can better support employability and professional communication readiness.

Teacher written feedback is a central area of L2 scholarship and writing teacher education yet considerable research has focused on written corrective feedback (WCF) with considerably less attention paid to discourse-level (DLF) teacher written feedback. Our article identifies the gaps in the current teacher written feedback scholarship, explains why these gaps are problematic, and provides detailed recommendations for an agenda that examines teacher DLF and students’ use of this feedback. Our goal is to encourage scholars to explore new avenues of research that better take into account what writing “is” and “does” as well as take into account the linguistically heterogenous reality of 21st century writing classrooms.

Ancient Greek rhetoric gave rise to and contributed to the (initial) development of many terms that even today attract the interest of philosophers and rhetoricians round the globe. Among those terms is logos, perhaps most characteristically described by Aristotle in his Rhetoric. But Aristotle is not the sole ancient Greek representative of rhetoric who considered the term. In this essay, I explore how selected ancient Greek figures—i.e. the Sophists, Socrates, Plato, and a few others—understood logos in the context of rhetoric. I assert that, despite some differences, they essentially viewed the term similarly, as connected to discourse involving argumentation intended to exert influence for socio-political or philosophical purposes.

Existing research has explored the rhetoric surrounding women’s health, fertility, and motherhood, as well as the effect of medical discourse practices on patients’ understanding and decision-making in reproductive and other health contexts. I build on this work to examine the use and impact of common language surrounding pregnancy and miscarriage, especially for older mothers—particularly the terms advanced maternal age, blighted ovum, and expectant management. Drawing from rhetorical and autoethnographic methods, I argue that these terms function constitutively to shape sense-making about processes that otherwise exist only sub-clinically, and do so in ways that reify risk but also clearly demarcate the limitations of medical care. Broadly, this research contributes to our understanding of the ways that medical rhetoric shapes experience and understanding about reproductive health-related issues, and it also provides a foundation to more effectively communicate with pregnant women, and especially older mothers, about their care options.

This corpus-based study investigates the grammatical stance constructions in CEO statements within the annual reports of U.S. and Vietnamese banks from 2020 to 2022. The findings indicate that modality is the dominant stance type followed by attitudinal and epistemic stance markers. Both groups of bank leaders favor desire/intention/decision verbs with infinitive complement clauses, certainty/likelihood verbs controlling complement clauses, and volition/prediction modality. But variations exist in the specific stance devices employed to shape corporate image and engage with stakeholders. These findings provide insights into cross-cultural corporate discourse in the banking sector and have valuable implications for business writing and professional communication.

Technical and professional communicators need to continue to interrogate how the seemingly mundane documents they create, such as terms of service (ToS) and community guidelines, and the systems those documents become a part of can oppress, exclude, and affect marginalized and hypermarginalized communities. This article presents an adapted corpus-assisted discourse analysis of how “sexual content” is defined across a corpus of 176 ToS and community guidelines from 118 social media sites. The findings show how ToS and community guidelines can work together to complicate our understanding of how values are intentionally and unintentionally embedded in these documents in order to uphold power or to meet emancipatory ends.

Despite extensive research on metadiscourse, methodology descriptions in research articles provide limited guidance on how to identify, classify, and, particularly in cases of clustered items, quantify metadiscourse markers. This article discusses the methodological challenges of analysing metadiscoursal adjectives, using the example of novice academic writers’ use of adjectival interactional metadiscourse markers. Our exploratory analysis of the corpus (654,925 tokens) revealed that, in a non-negligible number of cases (13.5%), metadiscoursal adjectives co-occurred with other linguistic items that were performing different metadiscoursal functions, thus putting a different interpretation on the initial observation. The phenomenon whereby both the adjective and its co-occurring item exercise a prominent metadiscoursal function—which we labelled superimposition —has been observed in previous studies but has not been adequately explored and has led to divergent, and often incomparable approaches, to metadiscourse quantification. We argue that metadiscoursal superimposition as a methodological approach can help bridge the gap between the individual marker analysis and their use in academic writing discourse, thus providing a structured, quantifiable, and functionally richer framework. We discuss the benefits, possible pitfalls, and implications of our proposal that superimposition be included and quantified as a supplementary step in metadiscourse quantification analyses.

Annually, disasters ranging from wildfires, earthquakes, hurricanes, and tornadoes to epidemics and even pandemics impact diverse communities globally. The calls for and research into improved disaster preparedness and better surveillance and resistance technologies are valid and necessary. However, it is pertinent that we also research and assess communicative practices of specific disasters, especially the discourse, rhetoric, and praxis that shape disaster response and management before, during, and after crises in vulnerable and marginalized communities. In Transnational Assemblages: Social Justice and Crisis Communication During Disaster , Sweta Baniya argues for the prioritization and inclusion of marginalized voices, centering their grounded knowledge, rhetorical agency, and coalitional networks. This will enhance effective and efficient disaster response as well as provide a more nuanced understanding of disaster rhetoric and praxis.

Background: Best practices for undergraduate technical and professional communication internships ensure that student experiences align with educational and professional goals. However, it is unclear whether internship programs attempt best practices to fulfill obligations to students, students’ workplaces, and employers. Literature review: Prior work has called on technical and professional communication on (TPC) faculty to lead internship programs in their academic departments. The scholarship imagines faculty who have access to workplace discourse, who are situated in internship courses or professional advising positions, and direct programs to build relationships, assess, and coordinate across academic-industry boundaries. However, it is unclear how these ideals match current institutional practices. Research question: What are the current practices of TPC internship programs? Methodology: A cross-institutional comparative content analysis examined 47 institutions’ TPC internship program and course descriptions and supporting documents that are publicly available on university websites. These were coded for themes related to internship best practices outlined by the literature. Results: The analysis found: 1. Programs give faculty supervisory titles but retain them and orient internships in academic contexts rather than orient practices toward employers, 2. Programs value their responsibility towards students over employers, and 3. The public-facing documentation does not obligate best practices as idealized in the literature. Conclusion: Current TPC internship practices do not fulfill all of the ideals imagined in the literature, but do maintain a humanist student focus.

Research on conditional reasoning has long debated whether human rationality is best captured by logicist accounts or by pragmatically oriented approaches such as Relevance Theory, which highlight contextual and communicative factors. While the former predict reliable adherence to logical schemata (e.g., Modus Ponens and Modus Tollens), experimental evidence consistently reveals systematic deviations, such as endorsement of invalid inferences. The latter view attributes such patterns not to irrationality, but to pragmatic expectations that guide interpretation. This study contributes to this debate by examining how logical validity and pragmatic congruency jointly shape the evaluation of conditional arguments. We report two experiments employing a 2 × 2 factorial design. In Experiment 1, participants evaluated conditional syllogisms framed in the standard 'if/then' format. Results showed that pragmatic violations slowed responses and, crucially, facilitated detection of logical invalidity, without hindering performance on valid arguments. Experiment 2 reformulated the same arguments using the Periodic Table of Arguments to replace 'if/then' conditionals with lever-based structures. Here, participants exhibited a generalized tendency to resist conditional inference, resulting in improved rejection of invalid arguments but reduced recognition of valid ones. Across both studies, pragmatic congruency alone did not predict accuracy, but interactions between pragmatic expectations and logical form systematically influenced evaluations. Taken together, the findings suggest that pragmatics does not override logic but modulates its accessibility: violations of pragmatic expectations invite deliberation. At the same time, semantic scaffolding, such as explicit 'if/then' cues, supports deductive reasoning. We propose that natural argumentation depends on this interplay, highlighting the need for situated accounts of logos.

This study contributes to the literature on corporate diversity and crisis management by analyzing stakeholder perceptions in the aftermath of Google’s and Microsoft’s sexual harassment scandals. The results reveal that both scandals were construed from the perspective of activism, an inherent feature of social media communication. While users made demands for additional corrective action from both companies, Google’s scandal was predominantly defined from the frames of controllability and perceived injustice, possibly eroding corporate reputation. By contrast, the frame of severity prevailed in the online discourse around Microsoft and showed a delineation between perceptions of senior leadership and HR. The findings have implications for the practice of communication management with respect to scandals.

This study investigated how reading medium (print vs. digital) and communicative purpose (informative vs. persuasive) shape writing processes and outcomes in integrative academic tasks. Eighty-one university students read three source texts in print or digitally and, after random assignment, produced either an informative or persuasive synthesis within a 2×2 between-subjects design. Keystroke logging recorded pausing across three writing stages, indexing planning, translation, and revision. Text quality was scored with holistic rubrics capturing discourse features and integration of sources. Reading medium significantly influenced pausing: students who read in print paused longer during writing, yet medium had no effect on overall text quality. Task purpose mattered: persuasive tasks yielded higher-quality formal writing, whereas scores reflecting level of source integration did not differ. No interaction between reading medium and task purpose emerged. When controlling for reading comprehension, working memory, and planning ability, the main effects of medium and task purpose remained, but period-specific pausing effects were no longer significant. Findings highlight distinct roles for reading medium and task purpose in shaping writing behavior and performance. The results support cautious causal interpretations and suggest that incorporating digital reading and varying task types may enhance academic writing in higher education, informing curriculum design and assessment.

This is an accepted article with a DOI pre-assigned that is not yet published.Rhetoricians and bioethicists have analyzed medical assistance in dying (MAiD), sometimes referred to as physician assisted suicide or euthanasia, and suggested that it falls into predictable topoi. To deepen our understanding of public deliberation around medical assistance in dying, we propose a Multi-Methodological, Multiply Ontological (M3O) approach. M3O encourages phronesis through methodological and ontological pivots. Diverging findings from each pivot may surface complexities that only come from putting those findings into conversation. We analyzed public testimony about MAiD bills proposed in Connecticut and Nevada with both framegram and topoi analysis, to discern how pro and anti-MAiD rhetors conceptualized personhood in this discourse. We found that both sides build arguments around intersecting topoi of (1) personhood as a set of ontological traits, (2) personhood as a social practice, (3) questions of autonomy, and (4) issues of vulnerability to suffering. When placed into the context of existing data on MAiD discourse and policy, we found that questions of dignity and personhood may be placed into deeper conversation with an analysis of risk and autonomy to complicate our assumptions about the values implied in this discourse.

This is an accepted article with a DOI pre-assigned that is not yet published.The current definition of post-truth creates an adversarial relationship with rhetorical theory, relying on a positivist stance toward epistemology. Additionally, the most public-facing scholarship concerning post-truth tends to view knowledge in rather concrete ways, failing to account for the nuance of differing types of knowledge and rhetorical situations. As a result, most of the pragmatic approaches to dealing with disingenuous post-truth rhetorical tactics are predicated on positivism (e.g., fact-checking) and post-truth gets either downplayed or only treated theoretically in rhetorical scholarship. This article redefines post-truth in a manner more amendable to rhetorical theory and presents a heuristic predicated on stasis theory as a method for evaluating the epistemic certainty of rhetorical claims. The heuristic is then used to analyze an exchange from an episode of the podcast Armchair Expert to demonstrate how rhetorical discourse can become unproductive and adversarial when interlocutors claim an inappropriate amount of epistemic certainty, in particular by treating value-based claims as facts. Discussions of the post-truth dilemma need to extend beyond the confines of the current definition to include all discursive practices that ascribe the wrong amount of epistemic certainty to particular claims, not just practices that challenge established knowledge and facts.

This article adds to previous literature on writing “wayfinding” by examining how a writer’s religious beliefs and commitments shape their rhetorical choices and influence their writing wayfinding. The 5-year longitudinal study we report here used discourse-based interviews to understand the experiences of student writers who are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Examining texts our study participants wrote in and outside of college classrooms, our analysis highlights moments when they used emotion and affect as rhetorical strategies to accomplish instrumental and relational goals. We found that in these moments, participants’ commitments as Latter-day Saints and their related identities significantly affected their writing decisions and their sense of wayfinding, particularly as they navigated writing contexts outside of familiar academic settings. The article suggests that understanding the challenges and opportunities writers face in the intersections between their rhetorical choices and their commitments as members of an organized church can help writing teachers better support students' writing development.

Overall, vaccine acceptance appears to be high. But vaccine hesitancy persists nonetheless. This article draws on moral foundations theory (MFT) to rhetorically explore possibilities of storytelling within the genre of the vaccine anecdote, a form of discourse common to vaccine-skeptical discourses. Informed by social scientific accounts of the moral foundations associated with high vaccine hesitancy, I analyze three examples of pro-vaccine anecdotes—an anecdote of injury, an anecdote of conversion, and an anecdote of positive outcome—to explore strategies of personal storytelling toward the values of vaccine-hesitant publics. From the analysis, I describe three specific modes of storytelling (haunting, continuing, and intuiting) while weighing their varying promise for aligning vaccine-supportive anecdotes with mild or more extreme levels of vaccine hesitancy.

The hegemony of English, or at least a particular form of English, has been robustly critiqued, yet is far from having been abandoned in teaching.[1] In addition, dominant discourse deems Native American languages “extinct” or otherwise incapable of speaking to academic topics. However, Indigenous peoples develop language for various subject areas, and languages are used in ways that represent the cultural perspectives of their users.[2] Such perspectives are part of the heart of Indigenous peoples’ sovereignty, and the right to use Indigenous languages supports, quite simply, Indigenous peoples’ right to speak and think.[3] Declining to accept assignments in an Indigenous or any heritage language (or requiring translations) conveys the message that English is needed in academic contexts, and is therefore communicatively superior. I argue that writing courses should support student refusals of translation, creating a situation where an instructor may not know what the content of a student submission even is, and that this inability “to know” serves the aims of decolonization.   [1] Alim & Smitherman 2012 [2] See: Kimura & Counceller 2009, McCarty & Nicholas 2014, Wilson & Kamanā 2011, Reyhner 2010, McIvor & McCarty 2017 [3] These rights are a main tenet of how Leonard (2008, 2011, 2021) theorizes language reclamation

Abstract The use of social media influencers as a rhetorical strategy contributes significantly to reshaping Emmanuel Macron’s public image. Aimed at countering the perception of distance conveyed in his initial Covid-19 speeches, this study explores the strategy’s rhetorical mechanisms, illustrated by a surprising encounter with two Youtubers, presented as a reward. I argue that Macron’s ethos is redefined through a deliberate balance between authority and proximity – both crucial to his image repair. The influencers’ unique format enables the implementation of this dual strategy, but they go even further by functioning as intermediaries who assist the president in adapting his discourse to align with the expectations, language, and values of their followers. In this encounter, ethos serves as both a means and an end. The collaboration between the politician and the influencers raises several critical questions: How is the strategy constructed? Who holds authority, and upon which models of authority does each party construct and articulate their discourse? How does this interaction affect the president’s style and language? What are the characteristics of their interaction? This analysis explores how influencers shape Macron’s communication and reveals distinctive features of his rhetoric within this unique format. In doing so, broader questions emerge about the boundaries between rhetoric, argumentation, and manipulation.

Large Language Models (LLMs) have ignited discourse within the Technical and Professional Communications (TPC) community in relation to authorship and accountability. This article employs a qualitative synthesis of current and theoretical scholarship regarding authorship theory and LLMs. This analysis argues that while LLMs provide assistance to improve human-generated text, LLMs are unable to participate in authorship, as they cannot be held accountable for their outputs, participate in reciprocity, or demonstrate rhetorical awareness regarding audience and context. The analysis urges professors and professionals to consider concrete guidelines surrounding LLM usage to create transparency in the classroom and workplace.

Because source use is a key academic literacy skill tied to students’ socialization into the university, scholars have called for more research on how novice second language (L2) writers’ use of sources changes over time as they engage with disciplinary discourse. The present study, therefore, tracked the semester-long development of thirty undergraduate L2 students’ source use in a research writing seminar course. Each student wrote two research papers for the course, providing sixty papers for both quantitative and qualitative text analysis. The researcher conducted data analysis in terms of citation density, source type, citation type, and source use purpose. Findings showed that students’ engagement with scholarly articles led to formulation of new citation patterns: incorporation of research summaries and frequent use of nonintegral citations. In addition, citation density increased overall, with scholarly sources newly used in theoretical orientations to John M. Swales’s CARS model. Nonetheless, students’ papers demonstrated a lack of proficiency in the sophisticated aspects of source use. The discussion concludes with suggestions for source use instruction in line with students’ understanding of disciplinary discourse.

Discussions about multimodal argumentation have long been hindered by doubts about whether non-verbal artifacts can express propositions. The opponents of multimodal argumentation have stated that semiotic modes other than language lack the precision required to express verifiable statements about the world. The aim of this article is to demonstrate that the account of propositions presented in speech act theory is suitable for analyzing multimodal communication, which is why multimodal argumentation can be studied in the pragma-dialectical tradition. By connecting Searle’s approach with the pragma-dialectic argumentation schemes, I suggest that the propositional act is constructed of three, and not two, elements: referring expression, predicating quality, and proposition scheme, the latter being a characterization of the relationship between the first two. I derive proposition schemes directly from argumentation schemes, noticing that the pragma-dialectical argumentation schemes actually characterize the relationship within propositions, and not between them. Based on that notion, I argue that when interacting with seemingly ambiguous multimodal artifacts, the receiver automatically chooses the most probable connection between the referring expression and the predicating quality from the list of proposition schemes, explaining why multimodal communication can be easily interpreted intuitively. Finally, I analyze several argumentative examples to illustrate how the proposition schemes can be used in reconstructing the reasoning expressed multimodally.

Typically, one might expect a review to highlight similarities, but here, I choose to place these books side by side for their contrasting perspectives.Before delving into the essence of the comparisons, it is important to recall the mission of the AK Peters Visualization Series.This series aims to capture what visualization is today in all its variety and diversity, giving voice to researchers, practitioners, designers, and enthusiasts.It encompasses books from all subfields of visualization, including visual analytics, information visualization, scientific visualization, data journalism, infographics, and their connection to adjacent areas such as text analysis, digital humanities, data art, or augmented and virtual reality ("AK Peters Visualization Series," n.d.).Both authors are practitioners who bring their expertise in communicating through visualized information and data.Jen Christiansen, who graduated in geology and art, is a senior graphics editor at Scientific American, while Nancy Organ, formally trained in statistics, has experience as a data visualization designer and educator.Each utilizes her unique skills for effective communication.Traditionally, rhetoric is understood as "a discipline concerned with the effective use of language, to persuade, give pleasure, and so on" (Matthews 2007).While this definition seems self-evident, it is essential to note that contemporary rhetoric encompasses all modes of communication.Interestingly, practitioners, educators, and researchers frequently refer to "the language [bold -EM] of data visualization," exploring its grammar, vocabulary, and stylistics (DataVis Lisboa 2020; "Visual Vocabulary," n.d.; Ben-Joseph 2016; Kandogan and Lee 2016).This context invites a closer examination of three key aspects: first, how various authors describe persuasive communication through information and data visualization, or as some call it, data storytelling; second, how to expand our rhetorical framework to include data, numbers, and statistics; and third, a deeper exploration of the audiences-crucial for rhetoricians-of data and information visualizations.As Burns et al. (2020) state.When designers create visualizations for communication, they make choices about encoding and design that they think will accurately and persuasively communicate their interpretation of the data.The ultimate interpretation of a visualization depends on both the designer and the reader. InventioBoth books target distinct audiences, as indicated by their titles.Building Science Graphics serves as both a textbook and a practical reference for anyone looking to convey scientific information through illustrations for articles, poster presentations, and beyond ("AK Peters Visualization Series," n.d.).In contrast, Data Visualization for People of All Ages is more approachable, specifically aimed

Abstract: This article argues that in his Philippos (Isoc. 5.149), Isocrates reinterprets the Socratic daimonion , transforming it from an inner ethical sign into a divine power legitimizing political action. Embedded in the speech's broader anti-Socratic polemic, this alteration aligns with Isocrates' conception of the politikos logos as a practical, audience-directed discourse. The daimonion passage thus exposes the philosophical foundations of Isocratean rhetoric: divine sanction for the interdependence of logos and praxis . By invoking a divine mandate that unites logos and praxis , Isocrates presents his logoi as performative texts capable of guiding Philip II of Macedon toward the common political good of Greece.

As a key attribute of effective writing, coherence remains challenging to teach in language classrooms, with traditional writing instruction frequently overlooking coherence in favor of discrete, rule-based features. This mixed-methods study investigates the effectiveness of explicit coherence instruction on English-as-a-Foreign-Language (EFL) students’ performance on integrated writing tasks. The study employed a controlled experimental design with 64 upper-intermediate-level undergraduate students at a Chinese university, drawing on Hasan’s Cohesive Harmony theory as the theoretical framework. Half of the participants (n = 32) in the experimental group received explicit instruction on coherence with a focus on cohesive chains and cohesive devices in integrated writing, while the control group (n = 32) received standard paraphrasing instruction. Quantitative analysis revealed that the experimental group showed significant improvements in coherence scores and multiple cohesive chain measures. Qualitative discourse analysis of six students’ writing samples from the experimental group demonstrated varying levels of improvement in writing coherence, with high-performing students showing better use of identity chains and pronoun references. The findings revealed that explicit instruction on coherence significantly improved students’ performance in creating coherent integrated writing, particularly through the development of cohesive chains and appropriate use of cohesive devices. This study underscores the pedagogical value of teaching coherence to enhance writing quality and provides concrete strategies for developing more effective teaching approaches for integrated writing tasks in EFL contexts. • The study examined 64 Chinese EFL students using mixed-methods experimental design. • Cohesive Harmony theory served as the framework for assessing writing coherence. • Explicit instruction significantly improved coherence in integrated writing tasks. • High-performing students demonstrated superior identity chain development.

This article explores how public writers view rhetorical decisions in their use of quantitative information to educate, inform, and move audiences toward action. Using the concept of “statistical framing” to describe how writers signal evaluations of numbers to their readers, we set out to learn how these writers connected their rhetorical goals to how they framed quantitative information. We interviewed 14 writers using the discourse-based interview method and found that, for various reasons, writers valued speeding up and slowing down evaluations of numbers.

Historically, scholars differentiated writing center tutors’ nondirective, facilitative talk from writing teachers’ authoritative, directive discourse. Recent research suggests writing tutors and instructors should instead select forms of pedagogical talk based on writers’ individual needs. One understudied tutoring model represents this blending of writing center and composition pedagogies: in read/plan-ahead tutoring, a model paralleling instructor-student conferences, writers submit drafts before sessions so tutors can prepare instructional plans. While this model may better support tutors who work with advanced writers, some worry that planning for consultations may encourage tutors to talk more like teachers than peers. To examine this concern, this study analyzes tutors’ pedagogical talk in thirteen read/plan-ahead consultations. Results indicate most tutor participants use communicative strategies associated with teacher talk, yet most writer participants express satisfaction with consultations. This study suggests this classroom-based model of writing conferencing can be adapted in writing centers while maintaining core principles of peer tutoring.